Author: Orson Scott Card

It’s weird how we can become so concerned about a social problem that we can come up with a new set of rules and then go way overboard in our enforcement – while nothing is actually accomplished in attacking the underlying...

I gave up on Facebook during the 2016 election. Weirdly, though, it wasn’t because people were so rancorous. It’s because everybody was so isolated and protective. See, I thought that the idea of Facebook was for friends to have...

If you can’t tell by the title that Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri is not just an independent film, but one with pretensions to being Art, and if you don’t know that this means that the ending will be frustrating and...

Everybody’s playing Outguess the Oscars, but that’s a pointless game now that the Academy members are terrified that if they collectively don’t nominate enough people of color, their Oscar voting privileges will be taken away,...

Here’s a Christmas gift success this year: Sur La Table offered tiny red waffle irons for something like ten bucks – or less. The price was so low that I assumed half of them would blow up as soon as they were plugged in....

As we were about to start opening the Christmas gifts on Monday morning, my wife told me that the first gift was for me. It was a small gift box of the sort that is always used in Hallmark Christmas movies – you know, the kind...

I love my Kindle Oasis, especially because it’s so much smaller than the original Kindles – yet has plenty of surface area to show each page in large enough type to be read by old and tired eyes. However, the trick is to hold...

So we were heading for Barnes & Noble to sign books that were stacked up waiting for my signature, when, to my surprise, we discovered that Barnes & Noble was completely dark. On a Tuesday at 5:15 p.m., that isn’t...

I love trivia games. Well, I love trivia games except for the sports questions and the celebrity questions, because I don’t follow sports and I don’t read People magazine. I don’t know any of the Bachelors and I can’t name you...

I was a pretty fussy eater as a kid. And it wasn’t by choice. For instance, I have very clear memories of sitting at the kitchen table in my family’s house in San Mateo, California, when I was 3 years old. My mother was making...

A weird thing is happening to me. At age 66, with one stroke behind me and type II diabetes busily changing my life, I find myself noticing perfectly ordinary things – walking up the front walk to my house with an armful of mail...

Murder on the Orient Express is based on one of Agatha Christie’s best Hercule Poirot mysteries, and when it was filmed by Sidney Lumet back in 1974, it was dazzling. Gorgeous sets, a fabulous cast – Lauren Bacall, Martin...

The Hallmark Channel’s annual “Countdown to Christmas” is already under way, with this year’s new movies debuting on weekend nights at 8 or 9 p.m. Now that there are two channels – the regular Hallmark Channel and Hallmark...

This is the time of year when the movie studios are bringing out their big guns – the movies they think have a chance of doing well at the Oscars. Fortunately, we’ve now passed that stupid season of October, when the studios try...

We’re finally deep enough into autumn that we’re not likely to have many more days with temperatures above 80 degrees. So it’s time for the changeover from the spring-and-summer annual plants, like petunias and coleus, to our...

Those of you not yet sentient in 1980 may imagine that the year was notable for the election of Ronald Reagan, or the Iran hostage crisis, or for the US boycott of the Moscow Olympics, or the census, or Indira Gandhi becoming...

Thanks, John Hammer, for your many years of vetting the candidates for local office and telling us the unvarnished truth about them. Readers of the Rhino Times are well aware of your principled positions on the important issues,...

When I was a kid, the resumption of new television programs with the new “season” in September was complete recompense for the end of summer vacation. Yes, we had to go back to school, but hey, there were cool new shows. When I...

If only Trump would just shut up. Theodore Roosevelt called the US presidency “a bully pulpit,” in an age when “bully” was the slang equivalent of “awesome.” The presidency is only a bully pulpit if the people don’t think you’re...

Home Again was one of two movies my wife and I chose between last Friday. The other was American Assassin. (When choosing a movie to go to, horror movies like It aren’t even in the running. Why should I pay Hollywood for scaring...

Why do you have a lawn? No, seriously. Why do you want to have this greensward that you must mow, weed (manually or chemically), water (even in our damp climate) and leave generally unused? Here’s why: English country houses....

The biggest problem with trivia games – even the well-written ones, like Trivial Pursuit – is assembling a group of people to play together. Let’s face it, when playing trivia games many people are at a great disadvantage, at...

My wife and I don’t go to the movies very much, for several reasons: There aren’t many movies that are aimed at people like us. You know, grownups. Even the movies thatcouldhave been enjoyable are often very badly written, and...

We just got back from a late-night showing of The Hitman’s Bodyguard. The reviews on this have been mixed. Our reviews are unanimous: Terrific adventure movie, with a double romance tossed in. Good dialogue, good writing, Ryan...

Nut Job 2. I saw it last Saturday. Did you guess that I went because my grandchildren were still visiting us? The squirrel Surly has come a long way since he inhabited those cartoons at the beginning of Pixar features, in which...

I wasn’t going to see Despicable Me 3 because, you know, Despicable Me 2.  But we have three grandchildren visiting with us, all under the age of 12. So now I’ve seen DespicableMe 3 and...

It’s an odd thing to say, but despite its role as the capital of American left-wing oppression – though Seattle, Portland and the whole state of California are vying for the title – New York City remains...

If you want good brioche, you go to France. Period. Very little that is called “brioche” here in the US is good brioche. For one thing, you mostly see it as a hamburger on a “brioche” bun. If it’s brioche, it isn’t shaped like a...

Summer movies are supposed to be huge. The studios bring out their biggest moneymakers in May and June so they’ll have a chance to sit in the theaters all summer long, raking in money. Except that many of the movies the studios...

When you drive across America with no particular itinerary, mealtimes can fall at awkward moments. Like between Denver, Colorado, and Salina, Kansas. Like westbound between Laramie, Wyoming, and death. There’s plenty to see in...

It was almost funny. Someone had told me that Schmackary’s in Manhattan made the best cookies in America. The store also did wonderful-weird things like allowing people to go online and order a bunch of cookies to be sent to the...

As my wife’s father’s 90th birthday began to evolve into a family reunion – which would take place in Utah, where he and my mother-in-law have lived almost their entire lives, and in Orem continuously since 1963 – my wife and I...

When I was young, I finished every book I started, or felt guilty about it for months. It’s not as if I felt I owed the author something, and had failed to pay what was due. I didn’t think about the author at all. It was the...

When promotion began for NBC’s new dance program, World of Dance, with Jennifer Lopez as the lead judge, I was optimistic. I was seeing no promotion for So You Think You Can Dance, and I vaguely assumed that it might have been...

I always thought the Wonder Woman TV series was terminally dumb. I hated her dumb red-white-and-blue merry-widow costume, I hated the dumb stuff she did to wield superpowers (a rope? crossing her arms? spinning around till they...

Because I really liked the first two Amos Decker novels by David Baldacci, I pre-ordered the third one from Audible.com. The Fix had a promising premise: A rich and respected defense contractor happens upon a complete stranger...

You know it’s time to stop channel surfing and go to bed when you find yourself checking back with HBO’s showing of Barb Wire (1996), a sci-fi action flick, in order to see if at some point the story becomes coherent or even...

King Arthur. A legend that grew out of a warrior (not a king) who rated exactly one mention of his name in the meager history of the Middle Ages in Britain. When many British refugees fled the Saxons and Danes and Irish raiders...

Come on now. If you liked Guardians of the Galaxy, you’re going to go see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 no matter what I say about it. In fact, you’ve probably already seen it. If not, go. Contrary to what some idiot reviewers...

Grades for the courses I taught this semester were due on Tuesday, May 2, at 5 p.m. My response to the copy-edit of my novel Children of the Fleet had an ironclad deadline, though, and because my livelihood is tied to my books,...

The semester is nearly over at Southern Virginia University, where I teach, and that means that I must soon pass through that torment known as “grading.” I understand the purpose of grading; I also understand that grading has...

I have always loved singing in choirs, especially after I learned in my 20s how to bend my baritone voice to sing most tenor parts. (The “Hallelujah Chorus” from Messiah rides that high G too hard for me to sustain it, alas.) On...

The goldfinches are blooming in our yard again. All winter, before I went up to teach at Southern Virginia each week, I’d fill the appropriate bird and squirrel feeders in our yard with sunflower chips, nyjer seeds, peanuts and...

These past few weeks, I’ve read three books that consisted mostly of statistics – both methodology and results. Even if you’re a statistician – which I am not – no one can call such analyses and lists “thrilling.” Yet when good...

For years I’ve been so happy with Uni-Ball pens that I buy them by the box. But I’m also an office-supply fanatic, which is why I get the OfficeSupplyGeek.com weekly newsletter. Needless to say, Brian Greene, the reviewer there,...

I spent two weeks fighting the same vicious cold that has afflicted so many people this winter. Despite a brief fever, it never rose to the level of influenza, and while any lung ailment I get always wants to turn into bacterial...

For those who, like me, are stuck with Windows 10, it’s plain that this time, Microsoft actually tried to deliver a stable operating system. But, as usual, they have proven themselves completely unconcerned with the experience...

I still read The New Yorker, and not just for the cartoons. OK, yes, I subscribe to it for the cartoons. I do. They’re funny. Everyone knows that they publish the best cartoons by the best cartoonists, and their caption-writing...

What with the childish political speeches at various award shows earlier in the year, my wife and I canceled our annual Oscar party in favor of seeing, with friends, our two favorite movies of the year – La La Land and Arrival –...

From the beginning of the whole foofaraw about immigration from Latin America – both legal and illegal – one thing has been obvious to anyone who understands economics. We would not have illegal immigrants if our economy didn’t...